What happens when the only hope of a threatened world lies not with heroes in shining armor, but in the hands of a band of misfits and criminals? Blackguards, a new turn-based strategy RPG, explores this very question. You will discover over 180 unique hex-based battlegrounds within a dark and mature story of crime, drugs, and murder.

Reviews

“Blackguards feels like the gift that keeps on giving. At the heart of its brilliance is an enormously engaging story.”
8.7/10 – Hooked Gamers

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Blackguards Deluxe Edition Content

About This Game

What happens when the only hope of a threatened world lies not with heroes in shining armor, but in the hands of a band of misfits and criminals? Blackguards, a new turn-based strategy RPG, explores this very question. You will discover over 180 unique hex-based battlegrounds within a dark and mature story of crime, drugs, and murder.

Play as a warrior, mage or hunter and customize your character's skills as you see fit. The challenging campaign delivers a story of doubt, treason and loss. You decide the course of the story at key turning points and determine its outcome.

Key Features

More than 180 unique battlemaps provide ever-evolving and novel challenges.

Make sure you have plenty of snacks, as this dark fantasy adventure has 40+ hours of exciting play time.

Lead up to five characters in your party to glorious victory or devastating defeat.

Enjoy enchanting hand drawn backdrops. They're beautiful even when your party members get their asses handed to them.

So before you spend a lot of money on this game... and waste 40 to 60 hours playing it... here's what you need to know...

This is what made the game fun...• Loved geeking out on the character sheet and building up stats and skills• The combat system (dice rolls, stat modifiers, your character's skills) is smart and fun • Combat frustratingly hard? Yes... but you feel you've earned your win• Thank dog I got this game for 5 bucks, and not 40

This is what made me hate the game...• After 20 hours of game play, you've seen it all• Same level design... same enemy types... same combat tactics• It felt more of a puzzle game than a tactical game• Cliche story: you lose your memory, and gotta find clues.... zzzzzzzz• You'll have to retry levels over and over and over and over again• After 20 hours, combat becomes tedious, boring, frustrating, and no longer fun• Combat is mostly based on chance, luck, and dice rolls – no matter what your stats are• No wonder they got rid of dice rolls in BG2

If you look at the Global Achievement stats of this game, only 7% finshed the game half way. That's because it's fun at first. Then the game gets tedious, boring, and frustrating. I wanted to play to the end. But after 30 hours, it was no longer fun.

I wanted to like this game. I really did. But the extremely clunky UI, the complete lack of explanation of gameplay, and the lackluster story made it very hard to do so. Not a complete waste, but there are much better games out there.

Played a few more hours, and it wasn't any better. The game is still wildly uneven in difficulty and very obtuse on how certain mechanics actually work. Everything out of combat is a complete joke; the "dialouge" which consists of clicking your way down the dialouge box until you're done, the fact that you'll most likely still be using starting equipment 5 hours in, the fact that all spells (no matter how trivial) have a failure chance, to the final point that Final Fantasy 1 had more freedom than this game does. Seriously, every single thing out of combat is a single screenshot where floating chat boxes tell you what's going on. Save your money, buy a better game.

Neutral: There is certainly enough to love in the story and roleplaying of Blackguards, but the combats are pretty painful. Drawn out mercilessly in some cases and filled with the occasional newbie trap, the tactical combat system is slow, clunky, and makes the game feel like much more of a grind than it needs to. Nonetheless, a high-production game that is worth picking up on a sale if the slow pace and high micro on the combat isn't something that turns you off (or indeed, appeals to you).

Tactically Reallistic its hard to say its good, its also hard to say its bad, so i'll give you both.

The Good- Battle system is good.- The Storyline is great.- Limited sidequest available.- Weapons & spells are extremely unique (only when you upgrade spells & weapon skills).- You can use environmental traps.- Battle skills & abilities are real great & useful.

The Bad- This game is so reallistic that when you buy too many items & weapons pass your limit, it'll cause your characters to do negatively poor in combat (depends on the weight of items).- If your not well prepared before events or battles, you'll have a tough time trying to complete that scenario.

my overall, if you are a person of poor judgement, don't buy this gameif you love Strategy/RPG type games, then this game is for you......

Blackguards is a medieval fantasy turn-based tactical RPG based on the Dark Eye tabletop RPG. Framed and tortured by the one you called your friend, you make your escape with a few other prisonners, trying to find out the truth behind the accusations against you. This review takes into account the Untold Legends DLC.

Pros: Nice game with enough mechanical depth to offer a variety of gameplay styles: rather than level-based progression, you spend adventure points on anything from attributes, weapon skills, spells and perks and determine exactly how specialized you become with your various talents. The story isn't of a great hero, but of someone who won't leave a mark on history, making your way in shady towns and accepting questionable quests, especially in the multiple side quests added by the Untold Legend DLC where you must take stances on subjects such as slavery. Graphics are good enough for the genre, tactical maps are clean, most of which have interactive environment elements you might use against your foes if they don't use them against you. The game is sufficiently balanced, and even with the occasional difficulty spikes, you can jump right back in the last encounter to try things differently.

Cons: Many will find the depth to be a bit too much, scrolling through 5 pages of skills and perks will make it hard to figure the best way to optimize your character. There is a limited variety of equipment, especially armor. The story is pretty linear and not all that complexe. The odds of success aren't mushed, so 95% chance of success might still miss, multiple times, in a row, which will frustrate anyone who isn't used to rolling dices. The music is somber, and sucks life and excitement out of the game whenever you're not in a combat situation.

Verdict: This is an ok RPG. It is definitively ported directly from its tabletop RPG roots, which might feel very "meh" to the average gamer. I still recommand it, it has enough potential for me to give the sequel a try. Just make sure you get the Untold Legend DLC, or you'll feel the game is short on sidequests.